reflective-essay.info

Usually writing the reflective essay presupposes your story about a certain experience you have had. It is a kind of evaluation of this experience. Sometimes the students are asked to write the reflective essay on a certain course or program they attended. Sometimes, you can write about any experience that is important for you.

However, the most common case of writing the reflective essay is writing about your college experience. The students can be the freshmen and write about their first year in the college. You can be a senior student and also write this kind of an essay.

No matter what kind of a student you are, there are some general points that should be highlighted in your paper.

The main focus should be made on your personal growth. It is obvious that you are not the same person as you used to be after graduating your high school.
Tell about the changes in your life and your personal changes. You have become wiser and more experienced, then tell about those things, which affected you.

Tell particularly about your educational experience. Think of the courses, lectures, tutors and their influence. You can also tell about your peers. Perhaps some of them were helpful for you in the educational process.

Do not forget to say a few words about your extra-curricular activities. These activities are important for every student. If you took an active position, your life after the classes should also be full of interesting events.

So, you have a good opportunity to think whether your college years were effective or not.

Of course, a reflective essay can be written for any discipline. Still, in this article I would like to tell about writing a reflective essay by those students, who study history.

Usually, this essay is assigned at the end of the semester. In a few words, in this paper you will have to describe what you have studied, learned, read and written during the semester. Reflective essay allows you to see your progress as a historian. Take into account that the main focus in your essay should be made on your written assignments, research and seminars.

Let us discuss what particular questions can be answered in your work.

Tell about particular kinds of the assignments that you have completed. Say what assignments were the most interesting and helpful for you.

Tell about your research and what you have learned about the ways to conduct it. You can compare it with your previous works and tell about the progress you have or have not made.

In your essay you can discuss the general content of your course. Think about some new ideas that were presented during the class discussions. If you have any suggestions on the possible improvements of the course, you are welcome to introduce them.

You can also tell about some of your personal changes. Perhaps your view of the history science has changed or you have changed your attitude towards classes. Tell about the difficulties you have faced during the semester and think about their reasons.

So, you have a great opportunity to estimate your progress.

Reflective essay implies that you will share your personal life experience with your reader. You may tell your reader about your love to someone (naming no certain person in particular, of course), about the case that happened to you when you were coming back from the university, etc. The most important thing is that you should give a kind of lesson to your reader and present information in a certain structure. Then your reflective essay will be excellent.

Why do I consider reflective essay to be the most interesting kind of academic paper writing? Let me explain.

When you write something, you are sharing certain impressions with your potential companion. It is certainly interesting for you to talk to your friend and to tell about you personal sufferings or feelings of joy because of any intrigue.

You have a perfect chance to share all this with your reader while writing your reflective essay. Just think of the most impressive case that happened to you or the most interesting and strange feelings you have ever had. Your purpose will be to involve your reader into reading, in other words to attract his/her attention by raising the interest towards the subject of your reflective essay.

The next you should do in order to make it successful is to make it look perfect. This can be achieved by means of formatting your essay and getting rid of all possible mistakes.

So, do not lose your chance to tell your story and share your impressions in reflective essay.

Usually students need to write a reflective essay after conducting certain research. And in the reflective essay you will need to give an estimation of the work done. From my point of view, it is really useful, since you have a chance to think of the problems and challenges during your work. You will understand what you have learned to do and evaluate the general success of your research.

Here are some strategies of writing the reflective essay:

First, you can evaluate the extent to which you were successful in disclosing and understanding the topic of your research. Think whether all the significant aspects of the problem under discussion were covered. Or you may consider whether your research helped you to improve your knowledge of the subject.

You can also tell about the methods you have used to find the necessary information. If you were looking for the sources in the library, tell about some effective strategies. If you have used the Internet, tell about the most efficient ways of getting the needed results.

Do not forget to tell about the difficulties you have faced. Perhaps it was hard for you to find a certain sort or format of information. Tell about the ways you have used to solve the problems.

Finally, you should tell about what you have learned and why this experience is important or helpful for you. Maybe you found out some new tools of the information search. Or just your topic allowed you to make some interesting discoveries on the subject.

So, you see that the reflective essay is extremely helpful, since it gives you a possibility to evaluate a certain experience in your life.

Reflective essay is really a good opportunity to evaluate any piece of your work, experience and so on. The main thing that you should not forget while writing a reflective essay is that you need to remain unbiased. You have to consider your work from both positive and negative sides.

As an example I would like to evaluate my studies at the university. Although I do not have to write a reflective essay, I want to know whether my education as really effective.

If to be honest, I was studying hard the first 2 years. On my third year of studies I fell in love and could not think of any lectures, seminars and courseworks. This was a year when I even had to use the writing service to complete my coursework. I know it was wrong, I mean such an unserious behavior of mine. Still, I am sure a lot of students had this experience.

During my fourth and fifth years I did not have to use writing services. I was studying independently, but I can say that I was not studying hard. I could do more and I could have higher grades. But I was just satisfied with what I had. I saw no reason for making additional efforts.

Anyway, I graduate successfully. I wrote my master’s work and passed all the final exams. I was really happy that I finally got my diploma and could be called an adult person. Today I do not regret about anything from my years in the university. Yet, I know that these years in the university could be much more interesting and pleasant to recollect.

Before we start to consider the principles of the reflective essay writing and the like, let us once more clarify the notion of the reflective essay. A reflective essay is such a piece of the academic writing, which is written after completing of the scientific project. It should reflect and analyze its results and the process of work on it.

The principles of the reflective essay writing are really simple and obvious. However, I suppose it to be necessary to set them in order to give you an opportunity ton understand them better and to keep them in your mind. So, the principles of the reflective essay writing are the following:

Reflective essay should report only the real results, and describe only the real action. The more truthful your reflective essay will be, the better for you. it may help you to increase your grade for your project, as well.

Reflective essay should contain a detailed and impartial analysis of your actions. Even if you write that you did everything incorrect, your teacher will see that you understand your mistakes, and will regard you with a high grade.

The more personal points of view your reflective essay contains, the better. Teachers know the value of it.

Write your reflective essay so that it corresponded these principles, and you will get high grades both for your essay and for your project. If you really feel like getting high grades for it, it would be very easy for you to make your paper correspond to these tips.

Once upon the time one little reflective essay lived. It was too short and too narrow. Due to these reasons, it was not noticeable, and many other essay types took the first places for many years.

People tried to create some limitations for writing all those essays. Only the reflective essay was not mentioned there.

People did not like to write the reflective essay, as they did not know in what way they should do it. So, one day a girl, a good student, made up her mind to help that little reflective essay to become more popular. She tried to invented interesting and catching ways of its writing.

She decided to make the text of the poor reflective essay narrative. “Let it be a story” – she said, “a story, which will reflect my feelings and emotions about the topic.”

With the help of the reflective essay the girl created more and more splendid works, where the core was her ideas! She wrote about what she felt and how she felt. It was not too difficult, as no certain requirements had been set.

Time passed… People started noticing the strong sides of this kind of work. They also wanted to write about their feelings and tell about their impressions.

Of course, with time the writers decided to create more or less certain rules of writing a reflective essay, still the peculiar feature to make the center of this piece of writing people’s feelings had been left.

You can believe in this story, or you may think that it is a silly joke. It is up to you. Thus, the idea to put people’s impression on the first place helped the reflective essay became one of the most pleasant types of writing. It is true and you know about it.

Reflective essays are the essays which allow your teacher to get to know about your work on the project. When you perform some scientific project, it is necessary for you to fix every step. You should also be able to analyze and to evaluate your actions, and to make a conclusion about your work. Teachers often insist on that the students should provide for the ways of improving the quality of their work within the reflective essays.

But for the students it is often quite troublesome and complicated to perform reflective essays. So, they can run into the following problems:

Some students forget to fix some of their steps to performing the project, and then they have gaps in their researching process. It may seem to the teacher that the student did not prepare a project on his or her own, but resorted to outsider’s help.

Sometimes students are not able to analyze their own actions adequately and impartially. Therefore, they make wrong conclusions, because they evaluate their actions wrong. The teacher is likely to stay unsatisfied with such a paper.

Some students cannot realize how they could improve their work, because it seems to them that they did everything correct.

You see, the problems are really complicated. In order to solve them, you need an outsider help. Some person should watch you, and then tell you about his or her impression of your work. It will help you to write your reflective essay so that your teacher was satisfied.

In order to start thinking about the ideas for writing a reflective essay, you should catch the essence of this reflective essay writing – what you write for and what you want to get from this.

A Reflective Essay: the Essence

This type of writing allows you present your personal opinion on the work, which you have read or written. As you may guess you should reflect the information, which you have got. Demonstrate your abilities to analyze and develop the idea.

A Reflective Essay: the Length

This work should not be too long, but not too short. I think that 4 pages will be enough. Including the necessary margins and spacing it will be about 1000 words.
A Reflective Essay: Ideas

In order to awake the ideas for writing a reflective essay, try to answer the following questions. They are not very complicated, still they can help you understand what you need for your writing:

What have you got to know about the subject, you have analyzed?

What have you learnt from this work?

How can this work help you in future?

What ideas are worth the attention of the readers most of all?

What is your personal attitude to the problems, raised in the work?

You should not be afraid to express your ideas in your reflective essay. Moreover, in this case your ideas take the first place. You pay attention to the thoughts, which are in your mind. You have read something, you have your opinion on it and you express it in your reflective essay.

Writing a good reflective essay presupposes organizing it correctly. And to organize your paper correctly, you should get acquainted with this article telling about the reflective essay structure. We will tell you in details how you should build your reflective essay in order to get the highest grade for its organization.

The reflective essay should have the structure like the following:

• Of course, as any essay, the reflective essay has to begin with the introductory paragraph. Within the introductory paragraph of you reflective essay you should point the following information: the topic of the research project which is reflected within the given work; the aims of the project; and a few words about it.
• Then will come the turn of the supportive paragraph. Your reflective essay should include at least three of such paragraphs. Within this paragraphs you will tell about the development of your research, about your project in general, and so on. You are also recommended to point the expected advantages and disadvantages of your work.
• As usually, the last paragraph will be conclusive. Here you will summarize everything, especially emphasizing the weak and the strong sides of the project. Your work would be invaluable if you will provide some ideas of correcting the disadvantages and improving the whole project.

You see, the structure of the reflective essay is quite simple. But you should be attentive to do everything correct if you do not want to fail to write such a simple (for the first sight) paper.